Pipeline Heroes Inside-Out: Part Three

Kelly Ng Wan
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Jul 2, 2018

For four years, the Pipeline Awards have recognized excellence in pipeline tool development, integration, engineering, and usage. They have honored creative visionaries who have given artists and studios around the globe the ability to focus on the things that matter. Although their work is not always publicly recognized, they remain devoted to improving laborious processes and achieving new successful models. We have seen some incredible work from extraordinary individuals that we fondly call our "Pipeline Heroes".

Pipeline Heroes Inside-Out aims to celebrate past Pipeline Award winners by getting to know them a little better! In the third installment of the series, our heroes discuss...

What excites you most about pipeline development?

Janice Collier, Mammal Studios

2016 Pipeline Hero Award

As a developer, I'm a real people person-- which sounds kind of awful, until you realize that, in a VFX facility doing pipeline, you're entirely at the service of others. The more hires we get, the more interesting the job becomes because everyone brings a different approach to their work. I like the moment where, in a group of people, something they previously found frustrating has been brought to light and corrected to improve the situation. We've solved actual facility problems in marketing-material photo-op "meetings," because getting to sit down and dig into those stories and get to the fixes is actually a lot of fun regardless of the context in which you're doing the work.

No Nuke gizmo or line of code is ever going to interest me in isolation as much as it does when it's placed in the hands of my fellow workers and I get to see how they're making use of it. There's a point in every project where I get a moment of relative peace and quiet because our collaboration has refined itself to the point where they're just working, and I can move on to the next thing. It's a good feeling.

Benoit Leveau, Milk VFX

2015 Shotty Award for Smart Publish Notifications

In the age of Google, Facebook and Netflix, there is a lot we can do to improve our workflows and come up with innovative solutions.

The buzzword of the day is "cloud". In terms of pipeline infrastructure, this will have a huge impact.

Andy Jones, Psyop

2017 Shotty Award for Cryptomatte

Right now? The fact that after decades of waiting for game engines to change everything, it finally looks like game engines are going to change everything.

Chris Bennett, Dreamworks Animation

2017 Shotty Award for DWATV Credits Tool

Working with all different departments and people. I get to see how the big machine works, and learn a new part of the process every week.

It constantly requires me to think in a different way, which I find to be a fun challenge.